which can be won by attacking another stronghold or through skirmishes. The Global Map is a collection of fronts on a map based on the real world. There are three fronts, one each for tiers 6, 8, and 10. Each front has provinces that generate gold for the clan that currently owns it. A clan may enter the global map by entering a tournament for a specific province, in which they compete against other clans and ultimately the current landowner. History The developers thought of the concept of World of Tanks in December 2008. The game was officially announced by Wargaming on 24 April 2009. Developers claim that the game budget was the largest ever in the game industry of the CIS. Alpha testing of the Russian version of the game began September 2009, with only six different vehicles and a single map available. By the beginning of the closed beta test, which started on 30 January 2010, several dozen vehicles and three maps were completed. In three months, the number of beta tester requests approached 40,000, and over 400,000 tank battles took place. Open beta test of the Russian version started 24 June 2010; at that point, there were seven maps available, along with over 60 Russian and German vehicles. Closed beta test of English version of the game began on 8 July 2010. The Russian version of the game was officially released on 12 August 2010; however, due to technical difficulties, the game servers went offline on 13 August. The open beta of the English version of the game was launched on 27 January 2011; the official release was scheduled for 12 April 2011. The World of Tanks pre-orders were scheduled to be available for the American and European clusters before the game release. World of Tanks was released online on 12 April 2011 in Europe and North America, before being released for retail in the latter on 6 September 2011, and in the former on 2 December 2011. The game was localised into the Japanese language within the Asia server on 5 September 2013. The Vietnamese server was shut down and merged into the Asia server during 2014. Promotion and other media In April 2016, Wargaming announced that a comic book based on the World of Tanks universe was in development. Titled World of Tanks: Roll Out, the five-issue series was written by Garth Ennis and Carlos